Here's how I think of it:  the baby is the federal government, and the bar is the economy.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a funny minute and a half and that's that.

How I missed this, I don’t know: Lionel Richie gave a performance for Gaddafi to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the US raid on the dictator’s compound.  Apparently he’s quite popular with Arab people. As well as the American military: Richie’s hagiographic wikipedia bio says:

Lionel Richie has amassed quite a cult following within the US Military. One Company of Army Aviators from MN and IA that are currently deployed to the middle eastern theater of operations have embraced Mr. Richie's goodwill towards the middle east and have named him as their mascot. Keeping with Mr. Richie's music, their motto is "All Night Long". The website www.whereslionel.com is how they communicate their reverence and respect for Lionel Richie.

But he’s not the only one of our celebrity betters to take a buck from Mo & Co.:

Beyonce Knowles gave at a private concert on New Year's Eve for a son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, according to reports, performing five songs at a club on the Caribbean island of St Barts.

The event featuring the R&B star seems to have been hosted by Motassim Bilal Gaddafi, known as Hannibal. The rumoured fee for Beyoncé's hour-long warble: $2m. Usher also took the stage, with Jon Bon Jovi, Lindsay Lohan, Russell Simmons and models Miranda Kerr and Victoria Silvstedt in the crowd.

Good thing they have agents and managers to steer them away from Tea Party appearances; that sort of thing could stop a career cold. 

Just got back from a wonderful dinner with Paul Rahe and family. Food was great, the family was just what you'd expect: bright and lovely. Two boys and two girls and a lawyer for a bride -- lucky man.

I hadn't been off campus so was quite surprised to see the damage: huge fallen branches on almost every front lawn. I'm told this part of Michigan doesn't get the huge snows that others do (I went to school in Indiana just two hours or so from here, and we get a ton of snow). In any case what Paul does not know is that all of the students whom I've met here sing his praises -- the one who drove me from the airport, the ones I met from the paper, the ones I spoke with in the hallway this morning.

I know all institutions have their troubles, and it's easy to romanticize from the outside. Hillsdale, however, looks so beautiful and placid in the snow, and the students I meet really do seem to appreciate what they've got in profs like PAul.

As hope and change drives the number of people on public assistance ever higher, it might be a good time to consider the fact that nearly two thirds of the federal budget consists of payments made to individuals. The chart below, which purports to come from the “Historical Tables” volume of the White House’s 2012 budget shows a disturbing trend. Maybe the new House majority can take this issue by the horns as well.

Hmmmn. Wasn't it President Obama himself who told us that our political debate did not cause the tragic shootings in Tuscon in his much-heralded speech? Personally I should like to have seen a renewed effort to increase penalties for criminals who use firearms to commit their crimes. Instead, this is what we get: a new center on civility. Says it's funded by private donations, but my bet is that within a few years the taxpayers will be propping it up.

I'm sitting in my hotel room on the campus of Hillsdale College, which I'm visiting for the purposes of teaching a speechwriting seminar. Last night, the night I arrived, the power went off for about 8 hours; it's been on and off this morning, so school has been cancelled. The water is too cold for a shower.

The upside? The power is now on, and when I turned on the television, C-SPAN3 was re-running Ronald Reagan giving his "A Time for Choosing Speech." It's one thing to read that speech, as I have done many times. It's another to sit through and listen to it. What a different Reagan from what most people remember: here he is young, vigorous, and even angered by the problems America faced. Delivered without a single flaw or stutter or missed word. This isn't the kindly grandpa that the left says it loves. This is a man in his prime standing up for what he believes in, in language as plain and forceful as ever he used.

What a wonderful little reward on a morning where little else is working.

Who here has had a mid-life crisis or knows someone who has? Where your anxiety about aging, your boredom with your job, and your sense of the monotony of life drives you to have an affair, buy a motorcycle, and hit the gym? 

According to the experts, this is just the stuff of Hollywood films and Oval Office shenanigans--not real life. "Crises" aren't triggered by age, but by some disturbance in your life, like a personal illness, a grave loss, or a career setback. 

Those things aside, by the time you've reached mid-life, you're actually less susceptible to crises than you might be at any other point in your life, which makes sense: by mid-life your personality has matured, you have a stable job, a loving family, a house. In other words, you've achieved many of the markers of happiness and success. When Alexandra Freund, an expert on these matters, asked her research subjects what age they'd most like to be, most said they'd like to be in their 40s. Life, like wine, gets better with age. 

So the idea of a "mid-life crisis" seems to be a myth: 

In the process of figuring themselves out, young people will wrestle with establishing personal goals and values. After young adulthood, however,personality remains relatively stable for the rest of one's life, researchers have found...

Midlife without the crisis 

In middle age, people tend to focus on making positive contributions to society through the interactions of people of significantly different ages. Such interactions include formal and informal mentee/mentor relationships, stratified workplace relations and cross-generation family dynamics.

Middle-age adults are "no longer driven, but now the drivers," say researchers Bernice Neugarten and Nancy Datan in their paper "The Middle Years" ("The Foundations of Psychiatry," Basic Books, 1974).

Critically, middle adulthood comes with a greater sense of control then other life periods. Young adulthood, by contrast, is usually a time of striving, and late adulthood is typically a time of loss, including of one's job, health and friends.

The most common complaint in midlife is not boredom, as many young people fear, nor a feeling of crisis. "People are experts of themselves at this age," Freund said. "They know what is good for them and what isn't."

Rather, researchers conducting large surveys have found that the main problem for middle-age people is feeling unable to get everything done.

"In middle adulthood, you are living at your fullest. You've achieved a lot in your job, the kids are growing up, you are healthy and have more resources than when you were a student. There is not much mortality in your social circle. … You know where you are going and don't question yourself all the time anymore," Freund said.

Not that midlife is void of critical changes: Menopause, andropause (male menopause), the emptying of the nest, and the death of a parent all often happen during middle adulthood. But not everyone sees these changes as negative. Menopause and an empty nest, for example, can result in a newly flourishing sex life.

For an alternative theory, see Frank Turner's angsty--but great--song Photosynthesis:

Lyrics can be found here: 

Well I guess I should confess that I am starting to get old 
 All the latest music fads all passed me by and left me cold 
 All the kids are talking slang I won't pretend to understand 
 All my friends are getting married, mortagages and pension plans 
 And it's obvious my angry adolescent days are done 
 And I'm happy and I'm settled in the person I've become 
 But that doesn't mean I'm settled up and sitting out the game 
 Time may change a lot but some things may stay the same 
 ….

Oh maturity's a wrapped up package deal so it seems 
 And ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams 
 All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will 
 Have to grow up be an adult yeah be bored and unfulfilled 
 Oh when no ones yet explained to me exactly what's so great 
 About slaving 50 years away on something that you hate 
 Look I'm meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity 
 Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me 

Perhaps Turner is the exception that proves the rule. Let us hope so, at least.  

Some hours after I posted Wisconsin: Turning the Tables, I added an update, pointing to a report that Dr. Kathy Oriel, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Madison Residency Program in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Department of Family Medicine had given an interview on WKOW TV in which she came clean about what the doctors handing out medical excuses to delinquent schoolteachers were up to.

There is now more information up at The PJ Tatler, which quotes from a story issued by the Associated Press:

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes covering public employees’ absences. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison [Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin], said he had given out hundreds of notes. Many of the people he spoke with seemed to be suffering from stress, he said.

“What employers have a right to know is if the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off of work,” Sanner said. “Employers don’t have a right to know the nature of that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it’s as valid as every other work note that I’ve written for the last 30 years.”

Among the doc tors from the medical school who were reportedly engaged in similar conduct were Professors Anne Eglash, Hannah Keevil, and James Shropshire. According to AP, the University of Wisconsin is investigating. “Right now,” says the PJ Tatler, “it appears likely that these doctors, as well as apparently committing fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, are also violating medical records laws, confidentiality laws, and may be a little out of the bounds of their malpractice insurance.”

It is, of course, possible that the University of Wisconsin will dodge its responsibilities in this matter, and it is entirely conceivable that the medical establishment in the Badger State will do the same. But there is in Wisconsin, I am told, a qui tam law, empowering ordinary citizens to prosecute malefactors whom the authorities decline to pursue. As I said yesterday, there is trouble a-brewin’.

As Wisconsin grapples with its budget, President Obama visits Silicon Valley billionaires.

"How do I un-friend Nancy Pelosi?"

Last month, California lost an opportunity to receive tens of millions of dollars in federal funding to provide healthcare to uninsured kids.  Why? It didn't enroll enough eligible children into its government health plans.

In response to a federal incentive program that awarded extra money to states that met certain enrollment numbers, California set a goal of signing up 352,000 new kids in its Medi‐Cal or Healthy Families programs. It fell short by about 24,000 kids, which left the state ineligible for the federal funds.

It wasn't that there weren't enough eligible kids in the state. This happened, let's remember, during a year when unemployment in California peaked at 12%. Researchers at the Urban Institute estimated in October that the state was home to nearly 700,000 uninsured children who qualified for state or federal programs but hadn't been enrolled. So why couldn't the state meet its enrollment goals? Because California has a cumbersome system that acts as a roadblock to enrolling eligible children.

One problem is that in 2009, to save money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut funding to pay certified application assistants, who help enroll those qualifying for Medicaid.

A second problem is that it has become increasingly difficult to find physicians willing to accept the artificially low payments — as low as 9 cents on the dollar for some kinds of care — that have been set by the Medi‐Cal program.

A third reason involves the hoops hospitals must jump through to get reimbursed for treating uninsured children who qualify for state or federal programs. If a family without insurance brings a child with a serious medical problem to the hospital, for example, the emergency room staff provides care with the expectation of being reimbursed by the state under a process called retroactive enrollment. But submitting such claims has become increasingly difficult. Delays and denials are commonplace. Some hospitals have grown so wary of participating in this hard‐to‐win system that they have opted to absorb the loss and chalk up the cost of treating such children to unreimbursed care.

In an effort to get more people signed up for coverage, our nonprofit organization, the San Jose‐ based Foundation for Health Coverage Education, launched a 24‐ hour help line for the uninsured in 2005. Through our live call‐in center and our coverageforall.org website, we have been able to help more than 2 million uninsured Americans who seek help.

The process is simple. First, we ask five eligibility questions. Then we identify public programs for which the inquirer might be eligible and provide applications for the programs and a list of documentation that will be required. It doesn't have to be an obstacle course.

California needs to simplify its process. One step in that direction would be to allow people eligible for Medi‐Cal to sign up for it at the "point of service" — when they receive medical care. California employs 26,500 state workers who are responsible for enrolling people in public programs, including welfare, Medi‐Cal and food stamps. This number could be reduced if Medi‐Cal enrollment could be done online at a clinic, doctor's office or hospital where care is delivered.

California lost out this year, and that should never happen again. By revamping its antiquated and inefficient enrollment system, the state need never again leave federal grant money on the table while children go without healthcare.

We hear the cliché, “Some gave all, all gave some.” A cliché' to some, that is. To others, the saying underlines a truth seared into the soul. We hear the horror stories of troops that came home from a hellish Vietnam only to be greeted by the half-witted narcissistic jeers of the unkempt and the unhinged. Coddled flower children and assorted blooming idiots whose only concept of combat was a sit-in at the dean's office had the stupid audacity to spit on men who lost friends and body parts in a far away land and call them “baby killers.”

Today, the yellow ribbon magnets are starting to fade even as the people who willingly stand between us and the 7^th century rejects who plot our murder continue their mission. But what greets them upon their return home? If the story of Purple Heart recipient Anthony Maschek is any indication, the answer is unsettling.

In February 2008, while serving his country in northern Iraq, then Staff Sergeant Maschek was assigned to the 10^th Mountain Division. Engaged in a fierce firefight, Maschek was shot 11 times, receiving severe wounds to his chest, abdomen, and breaking both legs and arms. After a grueling but successful two-year recovery at Walter Reed, the Idaho native is currently pursuing his dreams at Columbia University which, unsurprisingly, is where the story takes an ugly turn.

Maschek attended a university town hall meeting on the topic of whether or not to continue Columbia's 42 year-old military ban on campus. Exhibiting the strength of character that was exemplified by his service to the country, Maschek addressed the students, saying, “It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting. There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.” Some students yelled “Racist.” Others openly laughed and jeered the man who gave so much to defend their lives and their freedom. What is the level of moral depravity that leads to such vile behavior? Are the attacks of 9/11 so distant a memory that the people who willingly give their lives to protect us from another attack do not deserve at least a modicum of civility? Exactly what in the deuce has become of the much vaunted free and civil exchange of ideas that is ostensibly the hallmark of the university?

And since I'm on a rant, I might as well open both barrels. There is nothing, and I mean positively nothing lower in my estimation than the vile, semi-literate saphead who slanders and jeers one who has with his very blood secured the existence and liberty of his countrymen. Such self-serving nescience deserves a spotlight and tons of derision so that all around will come to know and understand the cowardice, the intellectual and moral laziness, the historical ignorance, and the unadulterated mental crapulence that passes for academic analysis and discussion. These people should be chained to a chair until they have met and heard the stories of every living Purple Heart recipient and then perhaps deported to Iran for a first-person perspective of what life would be without the US military defending their sorry hides.

Meanwhile, Anthony Maschek continues his study of economics at Columbia. He has a Facebook page, and a page on Linkedin.com. He has done a world of good for his country, and paid a high price. A hero and a role model, we need to celebrate men like him, and thank God above for a country still capable of producing such people.

As Sally and others have already noted, President Obama inserted himself into the Wisconsin budget battle by saying last week:

Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.

President Obama continues to display his misunderstanding of the constitutional order by repeatedly inserting himself into matters reserved to the states and localities, such as the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, the location of a mosque near ground zero in New York City, and much of Arizona's immigration bill. In ignoring the proper division of responsibility between the national and state governments, Obama distracts the national political state from the pressing responsibilities on its own docket, such as spending no more than revenues and protecting the nation's security.

Obama's intrusion into all of these matters has not just created a track record of political misstep after misstep; it has also wasted the valuable political capital of the presidency on matters that are not its business. Ultimately, this will make Obama weaker when it comes time for him to call upon the powers of his office for something truly important, such as maintaining a surge in Afghanistan, correcting his mistaken views on Guantanamo Bay, or balancing the budget.

Obama's intervention also shows that he misconceived the constitutional priorities of his office. The president's primary job is to protect the national security and conduct foreign affairs. The chief executive's role in domestic affairs was primarily intended to be one of moderating Congress. Obama seems to wish that someone else would take the lead on national security, preferably the courts. And he seems to think his job is to push the domestic political system to extremes, not moderation -- hence health care and now his assault on Wisconsin. He also wants to deprive our system of one of its greatest virtues: experimentation in solving problems by the states. If Wisconsin is harassed by Obama and his national allies into giving up on their experiment in cutting public employee benefits, that is one more tool lost to solve our dire budget problems.

More On This Topic:

The Battle For Wisconsin

What, I ask myself, would I be tempted to do in current circumstances were I Governor of the state of Wisconsin?

My answer is straightforward. I would be inclined to play hardball. To begin with, I would not give an inch. The struggle in Wisconsin is less about Scott Walker’s proposal with regard to contributions to pensions and healthcare insurance than about the capacity of the public-sector unions in the future to enforce their will on the Badger State first at the ballot box and then in contract negotiations. By shutting down the schools, the teachers’ unions have demonstrated their power – and, if the people of Wisconsin are to be masters in their own house, that power must now be broken. So I would stand my ground and call their bluff. I would wait for the delinquents in the state senate to return from their self-imposed exile in Illinois. In their absence, there will be no budget; and, in the absence of a budget, the salaries of those in the public-sector unions will in due course go unpaid. Scott Walker holds all the cards.

In the meantime, I would have a lawyer on my staff review the contracts binding those who teach in the Badger State’s public schools. There is no doubt provision in these contracts – explicit or implicit – for sick leave. My bet is that to be awarded sick leave one must, indeed, be ill and that the school can ask for proof. My further bet is that, in the absence of proof, the delinquent can be dismissed for breach of contract. That is what would be done with regard to workers in the private sector who lied to their employer in such a case, and that is where I would start.

Some of the teachers will no doubt be able to supply notes from medical doctors testifying to illness on their part. There have been reports that in attendance at the rallies at the state capitol in Madison were medical doctors handing out such notes promiscuously to all and sundry. The local schools should collect these notes and sort them. Should a certain physician be discovered to be a supplier to one and all, there should be a malpractice investigation and the errant physician should be removed from the roles of those licensed to practice medicine in the Badger State.

Finally, there is the question of the state senators who are playing hookey. As I have learned from reading the ChicagoBoyz blog, there is provision within the constitution of the state of Wisconsin for a recall of legislators. Article XIII, Section 12 stipulates that “The qualified electors of the state of any congressional, judicial or legislative district or of a county may petition for the recall of any incumbent elective officer after the first year of the term for which the incumbent was elected.”  This leaves some state senators temporarily exempt from recall, but those elected in 2008 (a Democratic year) are already vulnerable, and State Senator Jim Holperin (D-The Tilted Kilt), who won his seat in a squeaker with 51% of the vote that year, is in the latter group. All it takes to force a recall election is a petition signed by voters in his district equal in number to one-quarter of those in the district who voted in the 2010 gubernatorial election. The Tea Party should put Holperin and those of his colleagues who were elected through this ordeal. If the Republicans pick up only one of these seats, they will themselves make up a quorum in the state senate.

The longer this pot boils, the better. American voters tend to have short memories. But the Cheeseheads of Wisconsin will remember in 2012 what happened in 2011. Even more to the point, what happens in Wisconsin will go a long way towards determining what takes place in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Without these states – all of which he won in 2008 – Barack Obama cannot be re-elected President.

UPDATE: It looks as if the physicians handing out doctor's excuses come from the University of Wisconsin in Madison's Department of Family Medicine. In an interview, Dr. Kathy Oriel, who is Director of the Madison Residency Program has gone public about what they are doing. Read this entire post: http://punditpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/university-of-wisconsin-department-of.html. There is trouble a-brewin'.

It’s funny how certain anniversaries can zip right past unless something happens to remind you of them. The union protests in Wisconsin have reminded me that it’s been just about 35 years ago when I first joined my union, AFTRA (The American Federation of Television & Radio Artists). I still remember my first telephone call from the head of the local AFTRA office in Nashville, where I was working at the time. I was surprised to hear from him, because the station I worked for was a non-union station. I had, however, just received the good news that I was going to pick up some money by doing a small piece of voice work for a regional soft drink commercial, and the extra cash was going to come in handy. My caller told me, in a firm but friendly manner, that I couldn’t do that commercial unless I joined. I protested that I had not been told such a thing by the agency and, besides, joining would just about wipe out the small payment I was to receive. My new friend interrupted my protests with a simple, but persuasive, declaration: “If you do it without joining, I’ll see you never get a union job again in your life.” I tried to thank him for his help and congratulate him on his ability to paraphrase old  movie lines, but he had already hung up. I took his friendly suggestion and joined. Happy anniversary.

Another protest is being planned. This one, scheduled for March 3 outside the White House, is being organized by Anjem Choudary, the fellow who got into it with Sean Hannity earlier this month.

The former leader of outlawed group Islam4UK told the Daily Star 'we expect thousands to come out and support us.' ... 

Mr Choudary told the newspaper: 'The event is a rally, a call for the Sharia, a call for the Muslims to rise up and ­establish the Islamic state in America.'

However, whether the [speakers] will be able to enter the U.S. ... remains to be seen. Even a tourist visa requires applicants to answer questions on whether they have been involved in acts of terrorism or plan to commit crimes in the U.S.

I wonder if you folks think this will actually happen. If it does, what kinds of numbers do you expect? What kind of coverage?

I’ve been grumpy lately. Really grumpy. I’ve got one of those debilitatingly severe colds that doesn’t seem to want to get much better. I’m not looking for sympathy, but I mention it because I’m hopeful it’s partially responsible for my reaction when I re-watched the 1942 classic film, Mrs. Miniver, earlier today. Greer Garson won an Academy Award for her wonderful portrayal of the quietly brave title character who led her family through the dark days of World War II. The war was seen not on the battlefields of Europe, but through the lives of the people who resided in the small English town where the Minivers lived. The strength of character and the resolve and the quiet dignity of Mrs. Miniver and those around her was incredibly moving. But it got me wondering about today’s America and whether that strength of character, that resolve and that quiet dignity still exist. Do we have what it takes to make it through a really dark period? Do we really believe there are ideals and institutions worth making terrible sacrifices for? Can we really come together as a people to resist a terrible outside force?

My swollen head is truly worried about the answers to these questions. We seem soft and spoiled. We seem more connected to our communications devices than to the real world around us. The traditions, ideals and institutions that typically bind a people are under figurative attack as never before, and one has to wonder how they would fare under an actual attack. I know there was a burst of patriotism following the September 11th atrocities, but it didn’t seem to take long for political cynicism and expediency to begin to tear at us. Would the Miniver families of today be more willing to trade their way of life for peace and quite and uninterrupted satellite TV?

The world always looks a little darker when seen through swollen, watery eyes, so I hope those among you with clear heads and clear sinuses can say something comforting before I take another dose of NyQuil.

The crackdown in Libya is unspeakable in its cruelty.

Libyan troops have opened fire with machine-guns and large-calibre weapons on anti-government protesters in the second city Benghazi, witnesses say.

An unknown number of people, including children, are said to have been killed.

These reports, it seems, have been phoned in to the Telegraph's correspondent in Cairo:

Witnesses described scenes of chaos as snipers shot from the roofs of buildings and demonstrators fought back against troops on the ground.

Snipers shot protesters, artillery and helicopter gunships were used against crowds of demonstrators, and thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes as the Libyan regime sought to crush the uprising. ...

"Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned."

It's been an overwhelming week of news, and journalists the world around are exhausted. I was about to shut down the computer and go to sleep, but then I saw this on Twitter:

And they want you to know that they will never stand down.#Libya

They want you to know that they are frightened. #Libya

They want you to know that the security forces don't seem to care how many they kill. #Libya

Cameras & reporters strengthen demonstrators. Libya is sealed off. Everyone I speak to there says: 'Tell the world.'#Libya

When I read that, I decided I could wait another fifteen minutes to sleep. I am going to try, with whatever limited power I have, to tell the world, because this is unbearable.

And let me tell the world something else. Ronald Reagan described Gaddafi as "the mad dog of the Middle East."

Of all the evils and perils in the world, there is none that galls Reagan more than terrorism. Of all the anti-American thugs who hang out in the back alleys of the Third World, there is none Reagan despises more than Gaddafi. Last week those two hates came together, prompting Reagan to put the Libyan in the sights of the Sixth Fleet.

By contrast, this photo says it all.

There are those who have nightmares about Barack Obama. He was not, they suspect, born in the United States. He was not and could never be eligible to be elected President of the United States, and behind his candidacy lay a great conspiracy to impose upon an unwitting populace the agent of a foreign power profoundly hostile to our country.

I am not in their number. I admit to lunacy, but my fantasies run in another direction. Every once in a while I lie awake – or am I then awake? I know not – pinching myself (or so I think).

“Could it be true?” I ask myself. “Has everything that we have seen in the course of the last twenty-seven months been engineered by the supreme Machiavel of our age – that evil genius Karl Rove? Did he “discover,” in the manner of a Hollywood agent, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid? Were they found at a drugstore soda fountain? Or did he find them at Central Casting? Stranger things have happened. After all, it was Pat Sajak who “discovered” Keith Olbermann and sent him on to infamy.

“Wanted,” Rove must have thought, “the Keystone Politicos – a gang supremely capable of winning an election but utterly incapable of shooting straight once in office. Let’s start with an American half African caught up in a Third-World ideology invented in the 1950s and long out of fashion, vain beyond belief, obsessed with the notion that he is a world-historical figure, hostile to compromise, contemptuous of his compatriots, apt to think disgraceful conduct on the part of one or more of his own supporters provides him with ‘a teachable moment’ in which he can hector his fellow citizens, and so persuaded that as an orator he has ‘a gift’ that he supposes that, if he delivers three hundred speeches a year, people will bow down, strew myrtle at his feet, and chant, ‘Hosanna in excelsis.’  Then, we will need a lady legislator willing to advocate passing a bill so that we can see what is in it, and a half-senile clown from a state where the prostitutes greatly outnumber the preachers, a man who owes everything to the gambling industry.” “Wanted,” he must have thought, “an opportunity to impose this gang on the opposition and ruin them for a generation or more!”

I know, I know. It is madness! But ask yourself whether what everyone now takes to be true about what has happened in this country is not even stranger than my lunatic hypothesis. In 2006, you might have imagined that the Democrats would sweep in 2008. Many of us feared as much. But, if someone had also told you that, after the election, they would pass a series of bills without a shred of Republican support, bills thousands of pages in length that no one had bothered to read and that no one understood – well, what would you have said?

Consider the evidence! Just when Dennis Hastert and the Republicans in Congress had demonstrated that the Democrats were not the only corrupt, patronage-oriented party in Washington, just when you think that it really is over for the Republicans, along comes Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid to remind the American people just how bad it can get and to treat the opposition with so much disdain that the Republicans in Congress begin to grow backbones.

And how can you explain Wisconsin? In November, 2010 – when the Republics won both state houses and the governorship in that state, would you have predicted that the Democratic Senators in that state would charter a bus to flee to the People’s Republic of Illinois in order to shirk their responsibilities, paralyze legislative activity, and leer at the waitresses at Rockford’s Tilted Kilt? Did you foresee that thousands of teachers, who make on average a hundred grand a year, would call in sick and then descend on at the capitol in Madison carrying signs denouncing the state’s newly elected governor as a Mubarak and a Hitler for having the effrontery to think that he and the Republicans swept into office with him should enact the platform on which they campaigned? Would you have imagined that Barack Obama would then wade in, announcing his support for public-sector workers, making twice what ordinary Cheeseheads make, who think it unthinkable that they should be called upon to do what private-sector workers customarily do: contribute to their pension funds and help pay for the healthcare insurance from which they benefit? Had I predicted any of this, you would have thought me daft. You would have said, “Come on! The Dems may be corrupt, but they are not stupid!”

So, I suggest that this must all be the result of machinations on the part of Karl Rove. Rush Limbaugh failed with Operation Chaos, but Karl has succeeded with Operation Annihilation. Think about it. After the events of this week, what are the chances that Barack Obama will take Wisconsin in the general election scheduled to be held a bit more than eighteen months from now? What, do you think, is going to happen in Ohio and Michigan in the next couple of months? And what will be the consequences?

Ok, ok! I confess that this is all madness. Karl Rove did not dream this up. He is a bright enough fellow, but this is clearly beyond even an evil genius. But, ask yourself this: How else can you explain the self-destructive conduct of the Democrats over the last twenty-seven months? Do you think that someone has been putting LSD in their food? And what are they going to do next?

I saw a photo today supposedly from Egypt of a young man showing solidarity with the public sector protestors in Wisconsin.  It strikes many of us as odd -- people who make less than $2,000 a year showing solidarity with people who make 30-50 times as much.  But it inspired me to consider this parallel.

Set aside political repression:  Egypt is a backwater economy.  It has little freedom: in terms of being an entrepreneur, it's a tough place.  Hernando de Soto, author of the Mystery of Capital, researched how difficult it was to title private property in Egypt, which leads to less collateralization to build a business.  In a recent op-ed (subscription required) he laments:

The key question to be asked is why most Egyptians choose to remain outside the legal economy? The answer is that, as in most developing countries, Egypt's legal institutions fail the majority of the people. Due to burdensome, discriminatory and just plain bad laws, it is impossible for most people to legalize their property and businesses, no matter how well intentioned they might be....

All this helps explain who so many ordinary Egyptians have been "smoldering" for decades. Despite hard work and savings, they can do little to improve their lives.

Now think about Wisconsin.  This is a state that also has a below-average (for the USA) amount of economic freedom.  It may be easier to send your child to a private education in Egypt than in Wisconsin, for example -- all private schools in Wisconsin operate only with government approval.  It ranks 37th on the scale for freedom in the states, two spots behind my own Minnesota (where one radio talk host often jokes, "the state where absolutely nothing is legal.")  

The difference is that politically Wisconsin is much more free.  Looking at its neighboring Iowa (#16 on the economic freedom list) it sees a state that has steered around the shoals of industrial decline better than it has.  Wisconsin sees Michigan (#14) and the choices it made in 2010, and was able to vote for that model over the Illinois model of doubling down on government.  In Egypt, they get the army and a slim chance of something better.  In Wisconsin, they get democracy ... at least they might, if those wandering senators bore of water slides and the Tilted Kilt.

Well, that didn't take long.  A few days ago I worried that the Democrats might avoid the

 difficulty of writing a final act to The Deficit Monster that Ate America in favor of starting work on a different horror flick, another in the successful Republican Budget Slasher franchise.  This morning I received an email from my congresswoman, Anna Eshoo (D-CA) confirming the switch and officially kicking off the 2012 presidential election season. 

Representative Eshoo tells me that she has "deep concerns" about the deficit and voted for many amendments to cut spending, "totaling over $55 billion."  But the Republicans want to cut $100 billion and this "spending plan is more than cutting -- it's crippling.  It takes a sledgehammer to the weakest in our society and to our collective future."  She cites the "nonpartisan" Economic Policy Institute--actually an outfit controlled by union leaders and other current and former Democrat officials--to assert that "this legislation will cost more than 800,000 private and public jobs.  It will gut research and development..." yada yada yada.

Eshoo honestly expects her constituents to believe that she advocated a fiscally prudent 1.5% cut in the bloated $3.73 trillion budget, unbalanced to the tune of $1.65 trillion, but was rolled over by heartless House Republicans on their way to passing a civilization-destroying 2.7% cut.  I wait for the explanation of how, exactly, the incremental $45 billion in cuts will cost the better part of a million jobs.

Of course, no liberal communique would be complete without a paragraph highlighting the disastrous impact of fiscal rectitude on women and children.

Cuts to the Department of Education would slash the Pell Grant, leaving thousands of students unable to afford higher education.  Over 200,000 children would be dropped from Head Start education, and the elimination of Title X means that over 5 million low-income women would be denied life-saving health services such as HIV testing and cancer screening.

My reply to Congresswoman Eshoo is posted here.

How do you think this strategy will play outside of deep blue Silicon Valley?  

[Edited to add cool Godzilla photo]